Good news: Taking a break from your diet could help you lose weight

Constantly keeping an eye on the calories gets tiring and cutting out carbs can be a real bore, so imagine our delight when we learned that letting loose for a while could actually be GOOD for our waistlines?

*If this was a theatre production, it would be the moment the choir started singing as the main actress was illuminated by spot lights.*

Thanks to researchers from the University of Sydney a new study suggests that unrestricted eating leads to an acceleration in weight loss.

But before you stock up on sweets and place a bulk order of biscuits, there are some conditions to this dieter's holiday.

The study's authors say that the break can only last up to three days, Coach reports, and though you can eat as much as you want it still needs to be on the healthy side.

Oh, and the other big thing to bear in mind is that so far the study has only been carried out on mice.

The four-legged participants were divided into two groups. The first group was placed on a diet for 12 consecutive weeks, while the second was only subject to calorie restriction for six days before they were allowed three days of indulgence.

However the study's lead author Amanda Salis, Associate Professor at University of Sydney's Boden Institute of Obesity, Nutrition, Exercise & Eating Disorders, believes that the results should be the same in humans, based on existing research to do with dieting in mice and people.

'Our study suggests that if you're trying to lose weight, then taking a break from dieting could give you better bang for your buck in terms of the amount of weight you lose relative to the effort you put in,' she told Coach.

So, why does a diet break work?

Salis explains that taking a few days off dieting helps us lose weight because it prevents the body from going into starvation mode. When we enter this state our body actually slows down the rate at which it burns calories in order to try and help us survive the cut in calories.

So upping our calories forces our body back into burning calories at a faster rate and so when we go back to eating less our metabolism is working at a higher rate, thus more weight lost.

'If the results of this study apply in humans, as we predict they will, then when you return to a more careful diet after your weight loss holiday, your break could actually improve the efficiency of your weight loss,' Salis explained.

The expert has even tried out a diet where she oscillates between fasting and indulging herself: 'I fasted as an experiment by eating only during daylight hours, and lost and kept off 2kg. Anything that involves not eating or eating less for a period of time is likely to provide benefits.'

So, while the finding may not mean that we can bury our head in a tub of ice cream after having a salad for lunch, it does suggest that having a delicious three-course meal when out for dinner could actually be good for our overall weight loss.